As I peer into the bottom of my teacup at the end of the week to see what reading the lifeless tea leaves tell me, I am left pondering the number of corridor and café conversations I have partaken in over recent weeks with various B2B Head of Sales.  Moreover, I am cogitating a trend […]

Last week I progressed this topic, and culminated with the question about what this internal BDM would/should/could look like in the Australian B2B sales organisation environment. This function, and therefore the person/people that fill it, is not Telesales, Customer Service, Marketing, or even simple Lead Generation/Qualification. As the name in the heading implies, this is […]

Last week kicked off this topic, and culminated with the question about what this internal BDM would/should/could look like in the Australian B2B sales organisation environment.  To help me paint the picture, first a tad of context. We have all seen the indefatigable rise of e-commerce, social media and new age content marketing.  No B2B […]

New lead generation just getting harder and harder?  Gatekeepers and hound-like front end receptionists just getting keener and keener on keeping “the wolves at bay”?  Anti –spamming laws making it trickier and stickier to reach out to your target audience, even with thoughtful and professional email comms? An all-too-familiar quandary for the Australian B2B sales […]

Those fortunate enough to be present at the recent The Next Level sales team optimisation breakfast seminar in Melbourne enjoyed a vibrant debate on that age-old balancing act regarding right system and right players on the sales team.  As yours truly extolled the virtues of a scientific, even mathematical approach to gathering good data to […]

Picking up directly from last week, and the notion, however theoretical or real, that your sales organisation has mathematically, scientifically and defensibly drawn the “picket fence” around the low CV (current value) and PV (potential value) customers that do not reach break even to “pay” for minimum level face-to-face account management and visitation. As such, […]

“I am driving past that lower value customer to get to the higher value customer……..so I may as well drop in and visit” “It is important that all customers still know that we care enough about them to visit, regardless of their low value” “If we don’t, the competition will” “You never know which low […]

When is an apparent dollar of CV (current value – the revenue/margin contributed by a given customer) worth a dollar on an even playing field when compared with the CV of all your customers …… and when is it worth something less, because the given customer is not fully in control of his/her chosen supplier […]

An interesting viewpoint arose recently in a B2B sales and customer classification process workshop we facilitated.  It was a viewpoint that challenged one of our well-cherished beliefs.  And a viewpoint with more than a modicum of credibility.  The industry background is supply into retail pharmacy, but the same conundrum would apply to other sectors whereby […]

Today we are going to finish off my real world chat with “John” re the characteristics of good visit design in the B2B sales world (this conversation started two post/weeks ago).  A good place to refer to at this point is the Miller Heiman concept of the VBR…..the valid business reason .  It is useful […]